Battles - Gloss Drop

The reaction of many fans to the departure of Tyondai Braxton from Battles - who sang on the band's mostly instrumental debut LP and preceeding EPs and made the smallest contribution instrumentally - says a lot about the strength of the band's original lineup as a unit. However, if we're to believe the band, it was a blessing in disguise following a series of uninspired recording sessions that would have led to a perfunctory second album. Instead they had to start from scratch and effectively skipped over the "awkward second album" cliche.

This particular three-legged dog has re-learnt to walk better than, say, REM in the late 90s. John Stanier still drums like an agitated robot, while David Kanopka and Ian Williams have kept the sound as dense as before. On the one hand, most of the sounds themselves aren't surprising - it seems Mirrored mostly exhausted the band's repertoire of weird sounds such as walls of delayed guitar and stabs from instruments you can't quite identify. On the other hand, it turns out they hadn't run out of ways to apply those sounds.

Gloss Drop isn't so much influenced by popular music as it is aware of its existence. This manifests itself in strange-for-Battles touches such as chord changes in places where you might actually expect them from another band. But of course probably the most talked about aspect of Gloss Drop is its handful of guest vocal spots. Two of these are, for my money, the worst songs on the album. "Ice Cream", featuring Matias Aguayo, sounds like a bad remix of a Vampire Weekend song. It's amazing it doesn't have steel drums. "Sundome" takes an ill-advised trip into World territory in its first half, and it actually does have steel drums. I hate steel drums. Two of the best tracks are also products of collaborations: Gary Numan fills a guest spot nobody else could have on "My Machines", sounding as if he's competing for attention over said gadgets, and "Sweetie and Shag", featuring Kazu Makino (Blonde Redhead) is simultaneously the album's weirdest and most straightforward track. The vocal tracks are integrated seamlessly into the album, and if there's one aspect in which Gloss Drop is easily equal to Mirrored, it's its cohesion. Whether the core of the band is accompanied or playing on its own, each track sounds like a talented trio making the best of its circumstances.

This blog ain't gonna update itself

But I wish it would.

Radiohead - The Butcher/Supercollider vinyl single (an in depth review)

The Butcher is really good. It's all minimalist and shit. Supercollider is pretty good, too. It sounds very little like the piano version from a few years ago. It's also 7 minutes long and therefore has ended Paranoid Android's 14 year reign as Radiohead's longest song.

Blind Willie Johnson - Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground

Bill Callahan - Apocalypse

I don't put a lot of stock in lyrics. Partly it's because most lyricists ain't Shakespeare and partly it's because I'm not either. Mostly it's because I find the music the main concern when listening to, you know, music. Bill Callahan's no slouch in the lyric department, but the only reason I feel the need to probe his lyrics this time is his inclusion of the word "apocalypse" in the title of this album and two of its songs. Apocalypse literally means "revelation", but Callahan's journey as a songwriter stopped veering into unknown territory quite a while back. If there's any revelation here, it's Callahan's and he's keeping it to himself. The common usage of the word refers to the end of the world, but Callahan would never be that dramatic or anywhere near that sanctimonious. Whatever has ended or has been revealed will only make sense in the context of his future work. If it's anything, that is. The tendency of writers to over-reach and infer meaning that isn't there is another one of the reasons I usually stay away from that shit. But look how much space I've filled by discussing a single word! I have to admit it's partly because I don't know what to say about the music.

That isn't to say that the music isn't worthy of discussion. It's just that Apocalypse isn't going to surprise anyone who is familiar with Callahan's work under his own name, and I would only end up recycling adjectives from reviews of this album and others that I haven't read, but they may have. But Callahan's predictability is part of his appeal now; the quality of his work has reached a plateau, but it's a high one. Much like last year's live album Rough Travel for a Rare Thing, Apocalypse was recorded with a full band, but is still quite sparse and mostly acoustic. It's not the soundtrack to an apocalypse; it's an album you put on and have a drink, and if the world ends, the world ends.

Related:
Bill Callahan - Dream River
Bill Callahan - Rough Travel for a Rare Thing
My 200 Favourite Albums of All Time

Tom Waits

Sex, War and Robots tips its hat to Tom Waits, who was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was about fucking time.

Yes, blogs wear hats. Deal with it.


Related:
Tom Waits 40th Anniversary
Tom Waits - Bad As Me
The Cookie Monster Has Been Drinking: Brilliant Tom Waits/Cookie Monster Mashup

Flux Capacitor: Throwing Muses - Untitled (Throwing Muses) (1986)

There's no question that Throwing Muses deserve to be honoured in Flux Capacitor. They molded the then relatively new indie or "college" rock sound in the mid 80s more than most bands (and more than any other female-led band, if that matters), and, as the first American band signed to 4AD, permanently redefined the English label along with acolytes Pixies. The question is which album to pick, as their isn't really an accepted Throwing Muses classic album or ideal starting point. I've decided to go with the officially untitled debut for the same reason it was the first Muses album I listened to: why the hell not?

Cognitive dissonance set in straight away the first time I heard this album. My first thoughts were "this sounds familiar" and "I've never heard anything like this before". Kristin Hersh created the Throwing Muses sound by borrowing from REM, Wire, Joy Division, The Beatles and others, but, like the best innovators, fashioned it into something new. The debut never lets the listener get comfortable because it never sits still; you think the unrelenting post-punk ditty "Call Me" is going to set the tone for the rest of the album, but then the next track slows down the tempo and switches the time signature. The rhythmic shifts never stop, but Hersh's intricate arpeggios knit the whole thing together. Throwing Muses went on to release at least three albums as good as this one, but they wouldn't exist without this initial artistic triumph.

Related:

Throwing Muses - Purgatory/Paradise
50 Foot Wave - With Love From the Men's Room EP